Repaint our painted kitchen cabinets

Hi -

We need to repaint our painted kitchen cabinets. When we first bought our house we painted the cabinets, but did not do a very good job and now I want to repaint them. We did not prep them properly the first time and we didn't use the right paint. Here is how I plan to repaint them.

1. Rough sanding with medium grit sandpaper.

2. Repair with wood filler and then sand that down.

3. Sand again with a fine grit sandpaper.

4. Wipe clean.

5. Prime and then sand.

6. 2 coats of paint - sand between coats.

Do you think this is sufficient? I found some info that suggested also using a paint thinner on them and I really do not want to have to do that.

How you proceed is somewhat determined by what type of paint you used originally. Was it an oil paint or latex?

Oil paints sand well and a certain amount of roughness can be sanded out and chips feathered out. Latex paint has a somewhat soft, gummy film which merely clog up your sandpaper. If the old paint is latex, and you want a top notch job, you should consider stripping the cabinets, or at least the doors. The doors can at least be removed to another area where the mess of using chemical strippers is easier to deal with.

The roughness of the base cabinets can be lessened by use of a high build oil enamel undercoater. Followed by a good sanding with fine sandpaper, these high build undercoaters will fill in some of the texture.

Your finish coat can then be either an oil enamel or an acrylic enamel. There are pros and cons to both: oils dry to a hard, durable surface which can be more easily touched up. Its down side is the slow drying, smell and that they tend to yellow with age. Acrylics do not yellow. They dry rapidly with minimal smell. They are, however, a little harder to brush and get them to level out nicely. Critical when brushing is to work rapidly and not over brush. Acrylics only have a couple minutes before they start forming a skin. Brush rapidly and leave it alone to level itself! Use of a foam trim roller will help get the paint on evenly and rapdly, giving the paint maximum time to level out.